A Cowardly and Superstitious Lot
by I Am The Prince of Wales
Summary: Veronica helps a fellow student deal with the theft of an embarrassing video tape. Distressingly, it's not what you think. Meanwhile, Keith, Weevil, and Backup team up to take down an dog fighting ring.
1. Chapter 1

**TITLE: **A Cowardly and Superstitious Lot

**AUTHOR:** Mike Pulgoni, Prince of Wales

**NOTES:** Believe it or not, this actually based on a dream I had a few nights ago. I made some changes to make it a little more cohesive (like removing myself as a character), but it's pretty much all there. Maybe I broke the reality of the show, but since I'm currently trying to write a Hellboy/Office/Veronica Mars crossover, I'd clearly be lying if I pretended that mattered to me.

Set sometime during Season Two; in an effort to keep the feel of the show, Veronica's story will be told from Veronica's point-of-view, other characters' will be told in a different tense to indicate Veronica is not yet aware of their story.

**RATING:** Call it a hard T

**Prologue:**

It's a typical day at Neptune High, which is to say that I'm barely through the door when I hear "Veronica! I need your help!"

"Ah, the traditional Neptune greeting," I say, turning too smile at today's unfortunate victim.

Hmm, definitely one of my more unusual clients.

Jai Patton... a state champion wrestler from my apartment complex... whose friends are all the geeky little brothers of the 09ers.

Yeah. It seems weird to me, too.

But he's basically a decent guy, so I guess I'm at least going to listen to what he has to say. "What seems to be the problem, Jai?"

He actually does the old look-left, look-right, which tells me right there that he's not used to having secrets, and certainly not potentially damaging ones. "I lost a DVD," he whispers when he's sure no one is listening in.

"Maybe you should just go to Blockbuster and admit the truth, because I guarantee their fees are lower than mine," I say, more jokingly then cutting. I hope.

"No, no," Jai shakes his head. "This is a DVD that I made."

And here we're closing in on the real problem. "You lost a sex tape?"

"What?" Jai starts.

"God," I shake my head, "why do people keep making those things? You know this is going to happen. Have you never been spammed?"

"It's not a sex tape," he insists. "God, if it were a sex tape there'd be no problem."

"Then what?" I ask, choosing to ignore his later musing.

Jai is stone silent.

"I can't help you if you don't give me all the facts," I demand, not budging.

"Okay," he capitulates. "But no one finds out about this."

--

Now, there were a lot of things I could have predicted... but this was nowhere on the list.

"You like to dress up as Batman?"

"I made some fan films," Jai says defensively.

A thousand different responses are going through my head, but I settle on just raising an eyebrow.

"Look, a bunch of rich kids asked me to dress up for them," he admits guiltily. "I guess when your mom's a movie star and your dad's a producer, no one looks twice when you 'borrow' a van full of equipment to make your own Batman movie."

"But none of them could really fill out the old cape and cowl," I supply.

Jai nods, and lets some genuine warmth show for the first time. "Yeah, nice guys, but..." And then his smile slumps again. "They came up to me at the comic shop... of course I said yes."

And here my expression changes completely. "So, you _wanted_ to dress like Batman?"

"Yeah," Jai says as though it should be obvious. "Wouldn't you?"

I understandably brush this comment aside and go for a completely different line of questioning. "Okay... so I'm going to go back to the sex tape question: why did you make the tape if you didn't want anyone to see it?"

"I _do _want people to see it," Jai said simply.

"Okay," I reply, trying to take this all in stride. "So, you wanted to dress as Batman, you _want _people to see the video... how does this lead to you running up to my locker and begging for my help?"

"I want people to see the video at conventions, private websites... things where other Batman fans will be showing their movies," he explains.

He's silent for another moment before adding the obligatory "People I'm probably not going to _see_ again."

I nod and smile, finally this is starting to make sense. "But it's not the kind of thing you want getting around the school."

Jai nodded. "Can you imagine the shit I'd be getting until graduation?"

"Oh, I can imagine," I agree.

"So, can you help me?" he finally asks. "I mean, I don't have much to pay you with, but..."

Why is it that I always end up helping more "I don't have much to pay you withs" when there are so many perfectly good "my parents have more money than any human being could _possibly_ needs" just a few feet away?

Oh, right. Marshmallow.

"You haven't heard anything yet, right? No one claiming to have the DVD? Asking for money to get it back?" I begin.

He shakes.

"Then we're going to treat it as lost, not stolen, for now. We're to tear your house apart, your car... anywhere you could have left the DVD."

He nods, inexplicably finding this comforting. "And if someone _does_ try to blackmail me?"

"Then we move to the next step," I assure him, which works surprisingly well considering the obvious difference in physical menace between the two of us.

He takes a deep breath. "God, I wish this were just a sex tape."

And here we are, finally on the same wavelength.


	2. Chapter 2

Keith Mars was well into preparing dinner for himself and his as-yet absent daughter when the knock on the door came. "It's open," Keith called, his hands to busy crushing tomatoes, garlic, and herbs together to grab it himself.

The door swung open and heavily tattooed biker with a history of violence sauntered in.

"Eli," Keith greeted him.

"Sheriff Mars," Weevil nodded. Backup ran up to greet this new visitor, which involved far more petting and licking of palms than Keith generally condoned towards known criminals.

"Well, he certainly seems to like you," Keith observed.

Weevil smiled. "Yeah, me and Backup are pretty tight."

"All this money on dog food and he can't even dismember my daughter's gentlemen callers," Keith shook his head in mock rue. "Sometimes I wonder if it was all worth it."

"Well, let me assure you that my intentions towards your daughter are completely honorable," Weevil promised theatrically.

"Oh, I'm sure you know the consequences were that not the case," Keith replied with over-the-top warmth and energy.

Weevil snickered. "Actually, though, I'm here to see you, Sheriff."

Keith cocked his head to the side to show he was interested.

"You and Backup," Weevil amended.

--

After several hours of exhaustively tearing through everything Jai owned, the real depth of the problem became apparent.

"It's not here," Jai sighs.

"Certainly looking that way," I agrees.

He turns to me and asks "So, what's that next step you were talking about?"

I shake my head. "Right now we need to focus on the most likely suspects."

Other than the Joker, the Riddler, and Two-Face, naturally.

"Who knows about the tapes? Who would have access to them?" I give him my most hopefully reassuring smile. "I mean, with any luck you might have just given the disc to someone and forgotten about it."

Jai, however, seems unconvinced. And I just to pride myself on my ability to lie to innocent young men. "The only ones who know about it are they other guys from movie."

"I'll need a list of names," I ask as gently as I can. "I promise I'll be as discrete as possible."

"None of them are interested in hiding it," Jai shrugs it off. "They're not the ones in tights."

"Fair enough," I concede.

And then Jai has one of those horrible 'I just remembered' moments that always make my job a little more complicated. "Oh, and you should probably talk to the girl they had set up our website."

And somehow I just have a premonition who that girl is going to be.

--

"There's an illegal dog fight ring going on somewhere in my neighborhood," Weevil explained. "I want it shut down and I kinda don't think Lamb will be that interested."

"I didn't realize that would be such a problem for you," Keith said honestly.

Weevil shrugged, it was certainly fair enough. "Yeah, well maybe it wouldn't have been before I saw the results. Never met a dog that had it coming," he mused darkly.

Keith nodded. "What did you have in mind?"

"If I still had my crew, I'd shut down myself," Weevil explained, "but those days are behind me and I'm gonna need someone on the inside."

"You're not actually thinking of using Backup," Keith protested.

"He won't actually need to fight," Weevil protested. "We just shop him around a little to get a lead on who's running the show."

Keith thought for a moment. He didn't like the idea of using Backup as bait... but he wasn't about to let dog fights go on in his town. "All right," Keith agreed.

Weevil smiled. "You won't regret this, Sheriff."

If Keith was ever given legislative powers, he really would make that praise illegal.

--

"No, I definitely gave them back all their DVDs last month when their site went live," Mac assures me.

"You're positive?" I ask, grasping at straws.

"I do like a man in a cape, Veronica," Mac said laconically, "but I built the site, I can see the videos any time I want."

I nod reluctantly. "So... how secure_ is_ this site, Mac?"

"Well, you have join," she admits. "Which only requires a valid email password, so... I'd say Fort Knox."

"So, even if I do recover these tapes, Jai's secret is still out there on line, just waiting to explode," I muse I slip into the seat next to her. "Makes me wonder why I'm even trying."

"Well, that's not really true," Mac interjects. "I mean, sure anyone can look the video up, but they'd have to_ find_ it."

"Remember how long it took for that video of Carmen to circulate?" I remind her.

"Right," Mac agreed, "but consider the number of high school students looking up bizarre sex acts versus the number of high school students looking up Batman fan films and I think you'll see how your client is still pretty safe."

"I guess you've got me there," I concede.

"There been 34 hits since the site went up and most of those are the guys from the movie checking to see how many hits they've got," Mac informed. "They should have just gone with their original idea and hosted it on YouTube."

I nodded. "Aren't you proud that your generation is responsible for the downfall of American entertainment?"

"Hey, I'm enjoying watching the collapse, personally," Mac quipped cynically.

Okay, I guess it's time to go the crew list and find out if someone in the Justice League has turned against the Dark Knight.


End file.
